


Silver and Blood

by night_sentinel



Category: Hannibal (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Witcher 3 Wild Hunt AU, Witcher AU, rated mature for violence and gore, slightly irregular chapter lengths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-15 18:12:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9249776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/night_sentinel/pseuds/night_sentinel
Summary: Will is a Witcher, a monster hunter for hire. Hannibal is a monster.***A Witcher 3: Wild Hunt au, though it doesn't connect with the story of the game at all, just uses it as a setting. (You don't need to know the game to read this.)





	1. A Contract

_Three dark red eyes gleamed from between the shadows._

 

Rain dribbled down from grey skies and pooled across the already sodden ground. It soaked into thatch roofs and ran in rivulets across the muddy earth, gathering together and creating tiny streams and lakes between the weeds. The little town of Drudge was damp at the best of times, surrounded as it was by dense swamps and tangled forests. Now it was sodden.

Will stood just beyond the outer most huts, rolling his shoulders to more comfortably position the swords strapped to his back. The water had leaked into his clothes, wet lines down the back of his neck and soaking beneath his armour. He was cold, and his empty stomach growled audibly over the gentle patter of rain. The leather components of his armour creaked quietly as the water soaked into them, seeping in under the protective oils. He sighed, before finally squaring his shoulders and heading into the village, slipping in between the clustered hovels.

Light and the murmuration of voices spilled across the muddy path, leading up to the door of a rickety tavern. Will ducked under the shelter of the edge of its roof, and after a moment’s hesitation pushed open the wooden door.

The single room was uncomfortably crowded, muggy and warm, heated by the fire pit and the bodies of those who had entered to escape the rain. Eyes turned to follow Will as he entered, suspicious and curious alike. He tried to ignore them as he sniffed at the strong smell of cheap drink and piss, stretching a frozen stiff hand out to the fire for a moment before moving on towards the back of the room, heading determinedly towards the bar.

The barkeep glanced up as he approached, and nodded as Will dug in his nearly-empty pockets to place a small handful of coins onto the stained surface. 

“A drink, and a bowl of whatever you’ve got cooking,” he muttered, keeping his eyes fixed somewhere just left of the other man’s head.

“Right you are,” The barkeep was quick to scoop the coins from the counter, even though his eyes stayed fixed on Will’s. Will fought the urge to turn away from the gaze, to try to hide his own unusual eyes from the man’s suspicious expression. He was relieved when the barkeep pushed a mug and a bowl of thick stew under Will’s nose, sliding it across the sticky bar top.

He wrapped his hand around the mug and downed it in three gulps, feeling the alcohol warm his stomach, before picking up the bowl. His eyes scanned the inn for an unoccupied table, and skipped quickly over the stares of those at the tables closest. It seemed half the village was inside, though he supposed it was getting late, darkness creeping forward behind the clouded sky outside.

“We don’t get that many drifters through here,” the barkeep said carefully, interrupting Will’s thoughts and reaching across to pick up the empty mug. The man’s movements had a sense of nonchalance to them, but Will didn’t miss the slight tension in the man's muscles, or the two burly looking men on a nearby table, keeping a watchful eye in their direction.

“Just passing through, looking for a place to stay for the night. Maybe work if you’ve got it,” Will said, hand tightening around the bowl.

“Oh aye? And what kind of work do you look for with them two swords on your back?” There was a definite tone of suspicion in the barkeep’s voice now. “Don’t look like ye’d be wanting to re-thatch a roof or pull crops.” He eyed Will’s leather and chain mail clad body, gaze flicking to the hilts of the swords visible over Will’s shoulder.

Will shifted his weight on his feet and opened his mouth to answer, but someone beat him to it.

“Open your damn eyes Arn, and look at his cat ones. He’s a witcher.” 

Will turned to face the newcomer, a younger man who had been sitting at one of the nearby tables a moment ago. He had a sneer on his face and the strong smell of beer dragged through the air around him. 

“Mutant should leave where he ain’t welcome,” the man continued, spitting inaccurately onto the floor an inch from Will’s boot.

“Don’t plan to stay long,” Will muttered, then pushed past the drunk and made his way to the empty table he had spotted against the opposite wall. Ignoring the many eyes fixed on him, he spooned stew into his mouth quickly, a habit formed from being chased out of town once to often. It was never worth fighting back on those occasions. These were troubled times, unfriendly to drifters, even less friendly to anyone who wasn’t ‘ _us’_ , especially out in the swamps. His eyes stayed tracked back to the bar where the younger man and the barkeep appeared to be arguing.

With a sigh and another bite of stew he reached a hand up to touch the wolf’s head medallion around his neck, he could hide that, could even hide the two swords he carried, but there was no hiding his eyes. Orange-yellow irises and pupils that were elongated out like a cat’s.

He turned his gaze back to watch as the barkeep shook his head, seeming to dismiss the younger man, who left the tavern with a slam of the door. The barkeep moved away from the bar, approaching Will and sitting opposite him.

“A witcher aye?” The man said, wiping his hands on a grubby cloth.

“Yes. Will that be a problem?” Will said flatly, though the barkeep looked less tense now, more cautious.

“I’ve a room upstairs that you can sleep in, and in the morning you should… should go see the alderman, seems we might have some work for you after all,” the man nodded.

“Not afraid the mutant’ll blight your crops and steal your children?” Will asked, quieting the bitterness in his voice as best he could.

Some of it must have bled through the as the other man’s expression twisted awkwardly, “Ah, don’t listen to Nyev, he’s… folk in this town don’t get out much.”

“And you do?” Will dropped his spoon into his empty bowl.

The barkeep shrugged, “I see more passers through then they do, and I know that when you’ve got… what we’ve got, you need a witcher.”

“And what have you got?”

“Ah,” The man paused, “Best if you hear it from the alderman,” he turned his gaze away, and Will got the distinct feeling that he wouldn’t be dealing with an ordinary nest of drowners.

Making his decision, he nodded and stood up, “I’ll see him in the morning. The room?”

“Right, just this way.”

The room was as Will expected, small and smelling faintly of wood-rot, nestled above the tavern’s main floor. The barkeep had waved away Will’s offered coin, and the lightness in Will’s money pouch meant Will hadn’t pressed the matter.

He lay on the straw filled mattress, the scratchy blanket over him and his gear on the floor by the bed. Swords within easy reach. Hopefully this contract would work out when he saw the alderman tomorrow. The barkeep had been cautious to tell him too much about it, worried about scaring him off mostly likely, so it would be something a little unusual, at least to the villages. An ekimmara perhaps, or a spirit, maybe a leshen, out in these old forests and swamps.

He sighed and tried to empty his mind, rid it of the suspicion and mistrust of those below; the barkeep’s nervous caution that had seeped under his skin, and yes, underneath it all, the fear of the unknown. A fear of this monster that the barkeep had carefully told Will nothing about. 

He focused his eyes on a long crack in the ceiling where a star glimmered between strips of cloud, cold and distant. Slowly his eyes slipped closed and he managed to fall between the planes of sleep, listening to the patter of rain across the thatch above his head. 

Will dreamed, as he often did. 

 

_He dreamt of darkness, stained with the heavy scent of blood. Trees, tall and ancient, blocking out the sky and casting gnarled shadows across the ground. Behind the shadows something huge moved, so big that Will could sense it above all else. It seemed to fill the space, the world, before fading back to nearly nothing. The ancient forest seemed empty once more._

 

*

  
The alderman, when Will found him the next morning, was tall and thin, he looked weary, with an edge of desperation to the corner of his eyes.

“You’re the witcher?” the man asked, looking up from his seat as Will approached.

“Yes.” Will stopped a few feet away from the man, seated outside what Will assumed was his house. A small but neat home on the edge of the village.

The other nodded, and Will watched as the pale morning light filtered through the clouds and landed on the old log the man was seated on. The washed out light seemed to bleach the log, and for a second It looked like twisted femurs and skeletal hands. Will shook it off. He’d dreamed again last night, and his dreams always seemed to last into the next day, carrying ill-feeling with them.

“I hear you’ve got work for me. The barkeep - Arn, said to see you.” 

“Arnith has been hoping someone like you’d come through this way eventually,” The alderman said, standing and taking a step to lean on the tiny bit of fence skirting his sodden garden. The rain had stopped but everything was still wet, staying soaked with only the weak light to try and burn the dampness away.

“It... takes someone every few decades,” the alderman explained. “They disappear and we find them later, torn to shreds. Organs spread out through the trees. This year though… Ripper’s taken three already.” He looked away, frowning, gaze fixed outward towards the forest.

“The victims,” Will began, “they were ripped apart, was anything missing?” Was Will dealing with something that killed to eat, killed for territory, or just killed to kill?

“Ah, it’s hard to tell, what with the… er spread of body parts, but yes we believe it sometimes takes organs. Hearts, lungs, that kind of thing.” The alderman said, rubbing a hand nervously over the worn fencepost he was leaning on.

Will nodded slowly, “And no one’s ever seen the monster?”

“None that lived to tell the tale.”

An old monster, Will thought, active every few decades usually. Something dangerous, even for a seasoned witcher. Will knew he was good at what he did, but he would hesitate to take on something like this with such little knowledge. He was conscious of his almost empty money pouch though, and made his decision.

“Alright, I’ll take the contract,” Will said, then paused, “There’s the matter of payment,” he made eye contact for a moment. A witcher who didn’t charge was generally not a witcher who survived long. There was no place for charity in their line of work.

“Of course,” the alderman nodded again, “we’ve got some coin saved up, you’ll have what we can spare.”

“Good, I’ll need to know more though, can you tell me where the last victim was killed? I’d like to have a look around the area.” If he could find evidence of the kills, he could start to build a picture of the monster.

The alderman nodded, “We’ve found all three in the same place. I’ll take you there now, though I must warn you, it’s… quite gruesome.”

“I’ve seen a lot of ‘quite gruesome’ things.” Will said bluntly.

“Ah of course, witcher.” The alderman ducked his head slightly, then looked back into Will’s eyes, Will fought the urge to look away. “Tis not too far,” he gestured for Will to follow, and the witcher fell into step beside them.

They were silent as they left the village, scattered cobblestones giving way to the mud of the track under their feet. Damp grasses brushed passed their legs, their stems a dull beige.

The Alderman began to speak, filling the silence almost nervously, "Why two swords witcher? Is it in case one breaks?”

“Silver for monsters, steel for people,” Will shot a glance sideways at the other.

“Ah, I suppose you would run into a lot of bandits, and such. Out on the roads.”

“Yes,” Will said, slightly relieved, “tell me about the victims,” he changed the subject.

The alderman nodded, “Poor Anise was the first, disappeared around a month ago. We found her two days later… or what was left.”

“The first to be killed for decades.” Will said.

“Yes,”

“And the next?”

“Less than a week after, Lars was killed. He was a woodcutter, often spent time out in the forest, so we didn’t think to look for him for a few days… he was strung up in the trees, almost exactly where we found Anise.”

“Strung up?”

The alderman grimaced, “torn up like the others, but all into pieces. We found the pieces up in the trees, impaled on branches or just… hanging there.”

The surroundings began to change from old swamp to old forest, twisted trees growing taller around them and the ground growing marginally firmer and drier beneath their feet. The underbrush filled out more, tangled bushes and coils of moss and lichens hanging down around them. Here and there a slab of rock or a boulder peaked up from between the grasses, covered in moss and tendrils of creeper. Will could just make out some kind of carving on the rock under the vegetation.

“What are those?” he asked, gesturing.

“Oh, old elvish stones,” the alderman shrugged, “been here longer than the village.”

“Hmm,” Will acknowledged, he’d seen stones like this before, it seemed this forest was _old._

Will sniffed, sharp senses picking up the smell of damp earth, and under it the faint tang of rotting flesh. They must be getting close to where the bodies were found.

“And the last, the third?” He asked, as they manoeuvred their way around a fallen log. It was huge, and the trees around them were growing taller, blocking out more of the weak light.

“That was Skarn, we found him three days ago, he’d been missing for near a week.”

“You didn’t look for him? Or it took you that long to find him?” Will asked.

“Ah, Skarn’ed spend most of his time round the tavern. Wasn’t really the best husband or father, so can’t say his family was too quick to want him found. Probably hoped he’d finally up and left,” The alderman said after a pause, his tone careful.

“Right” Will said, he was familiar with the type, not everyone was missed when they disappeared. “The woodcutter was out here already, but did Skarn have any reason to go out in the forest? What about Anise?”

The alderman shook his head, “Can’t imagine it, though who knows what drunks get it into their heads to do, Anise might have, girl liked to pick flowers,” he said cautiously.

The man suddenly stopped, peering ahead through the hanging mosses and lichen covered branches. “Its just through here, you’ll forgive me if I don’t come with you, I’ve…”

“That’s fine,” Will interrupted, “You head back to the village. I’ll come see you when I’m finished.”

The alderman nodded and turned on his heel, quickly disappearing between the thick undergrowth.

Will felt some of his muscles un-tense as the other left. Being in the man’s presence had began to grow exhausting. That faint sense of tightly wound desperation he had glimpsed in the man’s blue eyes slowly seeping into Will’s own self. He also much preferred to do this part alone.

The trial of the grasses that made a witcher took everyone slightly differently, Will had been one of the only two to survive from his cohort of youngsters. He’d had seizures and strong hallucinations for nearly a week as the toxins and mutagens burned in his veins. Like all those who survived, he’d come out of it stronger and faster, with more acute senses and cat eyes that saw in the dark. 

But he’d also gained the ability to connect better with the emotions and drives of others, both monster and human. It had proven useful more than once, knowing how a monster thought and felt meant Will could better defend against them, fight them with something more than training and skill. But it also meant if Will wasn’t careful, he found those same emotions, thoughts even, sinking into his mind as if they were his own. It was unsettling and exhausting in the least, and dangerous at most.

With a shake of his head and a deep breath, he pushed off the remnants of the alderman and stepped forwards, entering the clearing. Tall trees bracketed the grey sky, and a faint breeze stirred the thick underbrush, shadows dancing over blood and flesh. It seemed no one had yet come to collect Skarn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter should be up in a few days :)
> 
> Also, Drudge is the name of a town in the witcher 3, but its all run down and abandoned. Oh well.
> 
> I welcome all comments and feedback :) Thanks for reading!


	2. Interpreting the Evidence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left comments on the last chapter! Hope you all enjoy how the story progresses :)

Ripper was a good name for the beast, Will thought as he eyed the remains. What was left of the body was propped up against a tree, split open from navel to neck with its entrails spread out on the grass in front of it. The left leg below the knee was completely missing, and a spray of blood had painted the tree behind the corpse red and soaked into the earth beneath it. The stench of rotting meat was strong, and several flies buzzed around in the air, attracted by the smell.

He approached, crouching down beside the body. It had clearly met with a great force, something powerful enough to crush bone and rip off limbs. The tear through the belly was ragged, and Will could see where the organs had been crushed and pulled out in the same motion that had ripped the skin and flesh. Like the alderman had said, a few organs appeared to be missing, though it was hard to tell from the mess that had been made of the man’s innards. He turned his gaze to the man’s face, bruised and bloated in death, with lines of dried blood darkening the skin around the eyes, nose and mouth. The hair at the back of the head was matted and dark with the same.

Died of blunt force trauma to the skull. It looked like the man had been dragged across the clearing and thrown at the tree, hard enough to crack bones, then the body, killed instantly from the force of the initial blow, had been gored. Guts ripped and pulled out between spread legs and across the bloody grass. Half a leg lost somewhere in the process.

Will stood up, and stepped back, looking around the clearing. All three bodies had been found here, and while the villagers would have taken the other two to be buried, there should be some evidence left of them too. He let his eyes flicker around, from root, to bush to branch until something caught his attention.

There - a cut branch. He approached, and eyed the slight depression in the ground below it, the indent of the edge of a boot, the blood that had pooled across the dirt and stained the grass roots red. The alderman had described the woodcutter as being strung up in the trees - a large part must have been here, a torso perhaps, and the villagers had cut it down. 

He looked around, it seemed they hadn’t found all the smaller parts, or had simply decided to leave them. A piece of flesh was visible a bit higher up, stuck in the fork of the tree. Another chunk was pierced onto a branch a bit further away, a section of thigh perhaps, shards of bone still attached. His gaze swept onwards, around the branches that closed in over the clearing, blood stained some of them, and he could imaging how it must have looked, torn flesh impaled onto branches, strings of intestine looped over a fork of a tree like some kind of horrifying garland. The pieces he could see seemed similar to Skarn, if more extreme. Evidence of blunt force trauma, and flesh and bone torn or gored open by an immense force.

Will then turned his thoughts to the girl, Anise. She had been killed the longest ago, and there would not be much left of her. He scoured the clearing anyway, eyes following the disturbed ground, the scattered bootprints of villagers, the smears of blood where the woodcutter had dripped from above. 

There was a section of dirt in the dead centre of the clearing that drew his attention, the earth, when he bent close to it, bore the faint smell of old blood, only just perceptible to his witcher senses beneath the stronger smells of fresh gore and rotting flesh. The delicate stems of the grass had also been crushed and regrown sometime in the past. A body had lain there, or at least a large part of one. Digging into the soft earth with a finger, Will inspected the ground, slightly darker a full two inches below the surface. Lain there and bled heavily, this body had been ripped like the other two it seemed.

His finger toucher something half buried in the dirt, and Will dug it out, grimacing when he uncovered a piece of desiccated flesh. Half a hand, Anise’s, judging by the size of the bones - visible beneath the ragged edge that ran from where the wrist would have connected, to between the third and fourth finger. He inspected the edge, the bones hadn’t seemed to have suffered the same blunt forces that had cracked those of the other two victims, instead the tear was cut more cleanly. A straight line instead of something more indistinct. There were also little marks on the bones, Will noticed peering closer, as though the hand had been cut with claws or sharp teeth. It looked slightly off for that though, no claws or teeth that Will was familiar with, the weight and angle of the indents didn’t quite fit with what Will had knowledge on.

Will dropped the hand back to the dirt, his own fingers gently parting from the shrivelled, darkened flesh. He stood, and eyed the entire glade, the sun peaked out from behind clouds as it rose to its zenith. The breeze was cold as it brushed between the tall, twisting trees.

Will let his mind sink down into the scene in front of him, gathering up each piece of evidence. The force and drive behind every cut and tear into soft flesh. The blood marks that told of where a body had fallen, or the angle and speed of an injury. The pieces and emotions echoing back inside of him and forming a cohesive whole in his head.

He started with the most recent, the drunk. The man had smelled of alcohol beneath the blood and gore, he’d been drinking, stumbled out into the woods perhaps, confused… disorientated. The monster had taken the opportunity it was given, and it had been… angry. There was a hint of it in the absolute force behind each blow, within the tear of flesh and crushed bone, but the anger had been controlled, no more and no less damage than what the monster had wanted. 

_An amorphous darkness began to take shape in Will’s mind, something large, taller than a man or even perhaps a horse, with the muscle mass to back it up. Will felt the darkness engulf him like a rising tide, coating his mind in its intentions and memories. He could feel himself tearing into the flesh of the man. He’d enjoyed it, felt his blood coat his face as he’d buried it inside that gaping wound, tasting the hot blood and fresh organs of the being that was worthless, nothing less than food and display. Despite the feral enjoyment of the kill, anger burned at the back of his throat._

_This was retribution._

The bodies had not been eaten, at least definitely not enough to sustain a creature large enough to inflict such bone-crushing wounds, and there wasn’t the animal intent of something hungry, so it was killing for what? Territory? Unlikely if the Ripper only usually killed once every few decades. No, there was too much intelligence behind the kills for something as simple as that. He thought of the woodcutter, strung up in pieces, blood dripping from branches and organs out in the open. A sight meant to inspire fear, but also beautiful in its gory precision. That was a message, a threat or a claim - see what I can do. See my power, my control. 

_The dark shape prowled at the back of Will’s mind, the monster was something old, definitely, but old and experienced, a killer with purpose behind each kill. Will felt himself rip into the body of the woodcutter, tear limbs and flesh apart. The anger was stronger, fresher, and he let it fuel him as he maimed the body far beyond recognition. Bones cracking under his weight and strength, flesh and tendons tearing beneath Will’s hands. He ate what he was owed, before forcing the body into the trees, piece by piece. This was anger and display. This was a statement of intent._

Will shivered from more than just the cold breeze.

His mind drifted to Anise, and the half-hand lying in he blood sodden dirt. The darkness blurred in his mind, and he lost the thread of it for a moment. 

_He tore and slashed with the coiled knot of fear in his stomach. Fear and need, this had to happen, and now it was happening._

Will gasped, and then coughed, forcing the taste of blood out of his mouth with each exhale. He felt like there was gore coating his skin, that when he went back to the village they would all be able to see it on him. He felt sick, and the feeling was made worse by the twist of motivations that had come with Anise’s bones. The emotions inside those little cuts and the clean line of the break was something pulled from the complete opposite direction to those of the other two kills. There was a desperate fear under the multitude of little scrapes across the surface of the bones, like an injured wolf, biting and scratching at whatever it could reach. The feeling was jarringly different to the controlled anger and… _purpose_ of the other corpses, the monster had felt something else about killing Anise, different to killing the two men, a different reason perhaps? Something about the killer had changed between Anise and the woodcutter, The girl had perhaps not been expected, or the monster had… been different. 

It was possible he was dealing with two separate creatures. One that killed with crushing blows and one with frantic teeth or claws. Without the rest of Anise, only half a hand to go on, he couldn’t tell for sure. His head began to ache, a low throb building behind his eyes.

Will breathed out, a slow expelling of air that attempted to cleanse his lungs from the cloying, mixed feelings of both desperation and anger. He didn’t enjoy falling into the mind of a monster, feeling the deep darkness of it crawling through his head, tainting whatever it touched. He hated these feelings of purpose and anger, how for a moment he wanted to stalk back into the village behind him and tear into flesh, taste hot blood on his tongue. It was always like this, the moment after connecting with a monster’s kill. Of course it was worse still was when the monster was a ghost or ghoul, their minds were twisted, shattered things which made him sick to his stomach.

He waited a moment, for the last of the urges to fade. The sun, half hidden behind the grey sheet of clouds in the sky, was moving onwards, and there was more Will needed to do. 

Will could narrow down the killer of the last two bodies at least, such strength would have to come from something large. The lack of claw marks and the undisturbed foliage meant it was unlikely to be a Leshen, the forest spirits tended to have a strike that left a more distinct wound, and their wolf pack familiars would also have left behind obvious evidence. A sylvan or a yaksha was also unlikely, though they had the raw strength to inflict such wounds, there was no distinct smell lingering in the air, and the purposeful control to the kills did not fit with their psyche as Will had experienced it. A chort or a fiend was therefore more likely. The huge beasts easily twice the size of a horse had powerful muscles and horns or antlers capable of goring and ripping flesh.

They were also smart, certainly, though he’d never heard of one that felt as… controlled as this one did, as intelligent.

He searched the ground once more, the earth was muddy and turned beneath the boot prints of the villagers, but a creature that heavy would have left marks that stayed. Eventually will found one - a print near the body of the drunk, half faded from the recent rain, its edges eroded by human feet. It was large, at least three or four times as long as his own footprints, and shaped confusingly somewhere between a wolf’s and an elk’s. Claws dug into the soft earth from three toes, but it had no indent of a pad, and fit with the beasts Will had in his mind. He circled around again, but the tracks didn’t seem to lead anywhere, and he could find no others to follow, any scents that he might have been able to track had also been lost, blown away in the wind or covered by the villagers who had milled around the clearing.

He found nothing that spoke of another creature either, but that kill was longer ago, and if it _was_ another monster, it was smaller, and its prints would have disappeared much more easily.

Will stood and stretched, feeling the bones in his back move and crack audibly, there was nothing more he could find here. He headed back out of the old forest, passing by the carved stones once more, his steps slow and his mind alert to any other clues he might find. The forest was thick, and while Will saw the occasional print of a deer or wolf, he didn’t come across anything else useful.

The sky was darkening when he made it back to the village, shadows growing between the buildings and spreading out across the ground. A couple of small children played in the dirt, their mother hissing for them to come inside when Will passed, her eyes gleaming suspiciously at him from the darkness of her doorway.

Will ignored it, heading purposefully for the alderman’s hut. The man was talking with a young woman, her hair dark and loose around her face, but waved her away when Will approached.

“Well?”

“Looks like you’ve got a chort, or a fiend,” Will cut straight to it.

“Oh,” the alderman paled, “a… chort? Fiend? What are those?”

“Relicts, monsters that have been here far longer than man or elf. Fiends and chorts are large, huge even, quadrupeds with dangerous horns or antlers. Like to crush their victims, though it seems yours enjoys ripping them apart.”

“But if it’s so big, surely we would have come across it before?” The alderman frowned.

“Not necessarily, they live in old forests, and tend to stay out of the way of people. There’s also tales of them hypnotising humans. Its possible this Ripper is quite good at remaining unfound, despite its size.”

“I see. So what’s you’re plan then? To rid us of the beast?”

“Tomorrow I’ll go into the forest, see if I can find its lair. Once I do it shouldn’t be too difficult to wait for it to show up. If I’m successful then I’ll return for my pay.” No tracks to follow but Will knew what to look for in the landscape; caves, shadowed valleys, somewhere with the remains of kills.

“And… if you’re not?”

“Then I’m sure you’ll find my body. Or part of it.” Will’s mouth twitched slightly in grim amusement. Chorts and their larger cousins - fiends, were among the most dangerous of a witcher’s prey, the mutations should make him immune to creature’s third, hypnotising eye, but even so they were huge, with a speed and agility that belied their size and strength. Will had never fought one before, never even seen one out of the pages of a book. There was a good enough chance that he would not make it back tomorrow.

“There’s something else though,” Will frowned, gaze slipping away, “The girl was killed differently.”

“She was? But she was torn up just like the others. How can you tell? We took her body a month ago.” The alderman looked worried.

“Not quite all of it, I found some bones left.” Will closed his eyes for a moment, remembering those little indents on bone, “I’m not sure, but I think it might have been a different monster. Something else may have killed her. I can’t tell more without seeing the rest of her body.”

“She’s been buried, what we did find of her.”

“I realise.”

“You can’t be suggesting we dig up her grave?” The alderman looked horrified.

Will shook his head, “No, at this point the body would probably be too degraded for me to gain much insight.” He would be unlikely to know more than what he had already gotten from the hand he had found, not this long since the girl had been killed.

“Oh,” the alderman murmured, then after a pause looked back at Will, “We’ve… we’ve only agreed on the one monster, hunt that down and you will have your coin. We’ve only ever had Ripper before now, I’m still not convinced it wasn’t just him.”

Will refrained from commenting on how it could easily have been multiple monsters in the past, the villagers just attributing it to the same one from similarities in the kill style. He also didn’t mention how the mind and emotions behind the kills had felt so very different. People were never happy to hear that he was good at killing monsters because he thought like them. Witchers were already mutants, already nonhuman monsters in a away. Will was worse, a partial outcast even among his fellow witchers, no one was less trusting of someone who could think like monsters than those who killed them for a living.

“I would suggest you look into it,” Will allowed himself to say, “but you're right, the contract is for the Ripper, thats what I’ll be hunting.”

The alderman nodded, then looked up into the darkening sky. It was starting to rain again, a fine mist-like sprinkle falling from the sky. “But tomorrow of course.”

“Tomorrow,” Will nodded, before turning and heading back towards the tavern.

The barkeep, Arn, handed him a drink and another bowl of food, bread and some kind of lumpy stew with bits of meat in it, before Will could ask, and refused pay.

“If you can get rid of Ripper you’ll have earned it and more,” Arn said, his face now devoid of the suspicion it had carried yesterday. “Anise was my cousin,” he continued, eye downturned, “I’ll do what I can to assist your stay with us.”

Will didn’t fight it, taking the food and drink to an unoccupied corner of the tavern, tucking himself as much out of sight as he could while he ate. Apparently he wasn’t out of the way enough.

Within minutes of sitting down, the young man from yesterday, Nyev, made his way over and sat forcefully in the chair in front of him. He sneered at Will, face pulled up into an expression of disgust and anger, and behind it the tiny driving force of fear. Will avoided eye contact, knowing it was stupid even as he did it. Men like Nyev latched on to any perceived weakness and didn’t let go.

“You need to leave, _witcher,”_ he sneered the word like it was an insult, “We don’t like your kind here. So best you move on your way before something bad happens to you.”

“No,” Will said, carefully placing his now empty bowl flat on the table.

“No? You don’t got a choice mutant. I’m not gonna stand by and watch you poison my town, I’ve seen you creeping around with your damn eyes. Watching us. Bet you think we’re just easy pickings, probably kill us as soon as Ripper would, if someone payed you for it.” Nyev was working himself up, puffing out his chest and twisting his expression into something ugly. Will had seen men go from calm to drive-you-from-the-town-with-pitchforks-angry in minutes before, usually in places where alcohol was involved. Few men were dumb enough to try and fight a witcher on their own, but Will could see a few others in the tavern paying close attention, even nodding in agreement.

“I’ve got a contract to kill your Ripper,” Will said, trying to project calm, “As soon as thats done I promise I’ll be gone.” No doubt about that, Will didn’t want to stay in Drudge a moment longer than necessary.

“Yeah? And how long will that take huh? I bet you’re thinking of hanging on here for ages, eating our food and drinking our beer. Someone ought to show you what it is we do to non-humans in these parts,” the young man glared, his body language that of someone only a few steps away from a fight. Will tried to look like he couldn’t be goaded into one, feeling the other man’s disgust bubbling up beneath his own chest.

“Seems someone oughtta-“

“Nyev!” Arn seemed to appear almost out of nowhere behind the younger man, “We’ve talked about this!” Then to Will, “I’m sorry about him, I am-“

“But he’s a fucking non-human mutant! You can’t trust him!-”

“-Leave it, Nyev,” Arn pulled the other man away from the table, and Will watched for a moment as they argued before quietly standing up. He drank the last of the beer in his mug and turned to his room, leaving to the sound of Nyev saying “When he takes our children it’ll be on your head!”

Stealing children, Will sighed, his shoulders growing heavy. Not all reasons to hate witchers were made from nothing. Children were not born into the witcher order, they were taken, or had been once upon a time. The law of surprise, the payment for a contract when the people were too poor to pay with gold or food. And of course seven out of ten witcher children died on the trial of the grasses, and those who survived were mutated, non-humans.

Will didn’t remember his own parents, nothing beyond the vague opinion that his father had been a fisherman. The smell of fish-guts and rotting timbers were about all the memories he had left of the time before he was taken to Kaer Morhen, home of the witchers.

He removed his armour and fell onto the straw mattress of his room, his headache had gotten worse and he tried to ignore the ache that had settled firmly behind his eyes. His hand reached out to grip the hilt of his steel sword and he fell into a fitful sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chap should be up in a few days.
> 
> Also, this chap is a bit long sorry.


	3. Dreams and Deaths

_The scent of death was thick in his nose, vines of meat and flesh and bone hanging from twisted, ancient branches. Their wood blackened with time and blood. Will stood in the clearing, surrounded by decades past of death, the memory of countless bodies piled up around him. The elf-carved stones stood high and tall, and Will could read the carvings, danger, death, blood. A woman, her ribcage broken open, heart missing, lungs ripped out and left on the dirt above her head. A man, twisted and forced into peculiar shapes, lower gut torn open and pooling blood across a stone._

_Do you see me._

_Two red eyes gleamed in the darkness, then a third opened above them. Will could feel the thrill of the hunt rise up beneath him, the joy of power and control. Felt bone and sinew rend beneath his grip._

_Little witcher, do you see_

_see_

_witcher_

_… witcher_

 

“Witcher!”

Will woke with a start, sweat dampening his tunic and making it cling uncomfortably to his skin. A pale face hovered above him, a young woman with dark hair and blue eyes that shone in the darkness.

“Witcher! Come quick, There's been another killed,” she said, stumbling back quickly as Will sat up.

“What?” he said, mind still fogged in blood and darkness.

“The Ripper’s killed again, my father sent me to fetch you.”

“Right, right.” Will hurried from the bed, pulling his soaked tunic off and replacing it, doing his best to ignore the girls quite gasp at the scars that littered his skin, teeth marks and claw marks and blade marks. She left in a hurry, her face red behind her hair. 

Will was quick to put his armour on and strap his swords to his back, following after her, out into the watery dawn light.

A few people milled about in the streets, pale faced and with the slightly useless air of those who weren’t sure what they should be doing.

The alderman stood outside his hut, talking to Nyev who was gesturing wildly. The younger man turned and walked past Will, a burning glare focused on the witcher as they passed each other.

“Ripper’s killed again. Seems Elleen didn’t go home last night, son found her on the road this morning,” The alderman’s face was grim, “Come, we haven’t moved the body yet.”

Will nodded, following the older man as he led the way from the village and along the road, out into the swamp. Mud clung to their boots, and the deep wheel ruts in the dirt had filled with water in the overnight rain.

“Body’s in the swamp?” He asked, as they moved further from the old forest, the road twisting between stagnant pools of water.

“Yes, to the east of the village,” he gestured to a track that branched off from the road itself - travelling closer to the swamp proper. “This way, its quicker.”

They wound their way through the marshes, stinking mud and half rotted vegetation filling Will’s nose. The village disappearing between the trees in the distance behind them as they moved further out. 

Several turns on, there was a sound up ahead, something between a growl and a croak. Will stopped, reaching up over his shoulder to draw his sword, silver glinting in the dull light.

“What is it?” The alderman asked.

“Drowners. Stay back.” There was a reason the road itself was further away from the waters of the swamp.

The other man’s face paled slightly and he nodded, taking a few steps back. Will eyed the swamp carefully, taking a slow breath and centring himself, brushing off the nervousness from the man behind him.

Movement in the water drew his attention, a ripple, then a shape rising from the dark surface. The drowner crawled out towards them. Its body was that of a man, though bloated and swollen, its skin was blue, eyes huge and black, and its fingers tipped with long claws. The smell of rotting flesh washed over Will as another of the necrophages emerged from the water, standing on two feet and approaching.

Will let his mind open up, almost without his conscious decision, taking in the loping gate of the creatures, awkward on land, and the steady unafraid press of them forwards. The animal hunger and desire to feed flooded his brain. Starving, drowner’s were always starving. 

He hefted his sword and was ready when the first strike came towards him, the creature’s skinny arm lashing out, claws slicing past his face as he dodged the vicious blow. His own arm lifting his sword to slash at the monster’s belly. Its dark blood splashed across his boots and he spun, sword arcing out. The drowner’s head hitting the mud with a thump, body following after. He didn’t have time to relax though as the second drowner came at him, a third and fourth now visible behind it, approaching Will and the alderman with hungry strides.

“Don’t let them drag you into the water!” Will called out over his shoulder. The alderman had backed some distance away, and drawn a short knife, his face pinched and eyes darting nervously around. Living in a swamp meant the man had surely seen drowners before, but likely not this close. He would have learned to avoid places which were likely to hold the monsters.

The distraction was a mistake, Will realised as a clawed hand glanced across his armoured shoulder, scraping down over his chest and catching in the buckles across his torso. Swollen blue fingers curled tightly in an attempt to pull Will closer, but he reacted quickly, sword slicing forward and severing the arm at the elbow. Without thinking he spun the blade back to block the creatures other arm - a blow he felt coming in his own mind as the monster itself did.

He made a quick sign in the air with his left hand, before pushing it out, magical fire rushing past his fingers and flaring up against the creature’s rib cage. It cried out, staggering back and Will was quick to thrust his sword forward in its moment of weakness, piercing the barrel like chest, blade edge slipping between visible ribs that stretched beneath the skin.

Witchers were trained in a couple of spells useful in the midst of battle, another thing that set them apart from the common folk and garnered distrust. 

He kicked the body off the sword and crouched slightly at the ready, sword held up horizontal from the ground in front of him. The last two of the creatures circled him, and he waited, the smell of their dead brethren had excited them, and in any moment they would attack.

They both broke at the same time. One leaping at his front while the other swept a clawed hand towards his belly from the side. He sidestepped just fast enough to have the claws scrape harmlessly over his chain mail, and stepped forward to meet the other as it leapt at him. His sword forced through its soft belly, its arms and hands clawing at his shoulders, and its needle sharp teeth gnashing in front of his head. Its stinking fetid breath washed over Will’s face as he used the monster’s own momentum to turn them both, keeping its body between himself and the last necrophage, and using it as a shield. He twisted the sword in its belly and the monster made a sound like a wailing moan, going limp as blood slid out of its mouth and over its long tongue. 

Will dropped it off his sword as the last drowner came at him, the monster unaffected by its dead brethren, at most driven into a greater frenzy by the smell of their spilled guts. Will easily dodged the creature’s inelegant attack, catching the second strike on the edge of his sword, cutting deep into the long, stringy muscles of its forearm. The creature reeled back with a snarl then leapt forward again, meeting Will’s sword now coming the other way. The length of blade plunged through the drowner’s throat, slicing through vertebrae and muscle and bursting from the back of the necrophage’s neck. The hilt of the sword bumped up against the corpse’s chin, and Will wrenched the sword back out, and the last drowner’s body slumped to the mud. He turned back to the alderman as he wiped the sticky dark blood off on the dirt.

The hunger and animal lust for violence that the drowners had carried slowly dropped from Will’s mind, and he grimaced slightly. The mind of a drowner was generally fairly simple, but twisted towards hunger and death. If a mind could possibly have a smell, then a drowner’s mind smelt of rotting things.

The alderman stared at Will, before shaking his head and stepping closer, hand still clenched white-knuckled around the knife in his hand.

“That’s all of them? He glanced around the swamp, as though more of them could rise from the mud at any moment.

“Yes,” Will said, sheathing his sword, “For now. You should send someone to burn the bodies before to long. Drowners don’t scorn the flesh of their own kind.”

The alderman nodded distractedly, finally tucking his knife back into his belt. 

Will looked back over the dead drowners. Drawing his own knife, he knelt down by the corpse of the last drowner, lengthening the incision in the back of its neck. With a flick of his wrist he cut free a chunk of brain matter, loosened by his sword, and tucked it into the small leather pouch he carried in his pocket. Drowner brain could be a useful ingredient in certain potions, and Will never knew when he might need it.

“Right, right. C-come, its not much further to the body now,” the alderman said, watching him with a look of confusion and vague disgust.

Will nodded and followed as they moved on. The track began to veer away from the swamp, back up towards the road.

“That was magic you did back there?” the alderman asked after a while.

“Yes.”

“That how you work out what the monster is? With spells?”

“No, witchers can’t do magic like that. At most we learn a few simple spells to help in a fight,” Small signs like _igni_ that created a gust of fire, or _aard_ that pushed force forward to stagger an opponent.

“Ah I see,” there was a hint of relief in the other’s voice. Magic wasn’t trusted, and those who had more power over it even less. Will could even understand that to some extent. He’d met a powerful sorceress from the Lodge once. A beautiful woman who could open a portal with a flick of her finger and summon lightning with a wave of her hand. He’d thought himself in love with her for a time, but in the end they’d both had too many scars for anything to work out between them.

“We’re getting close?” Will asked, he could smell the hot scent of blood on the gentle breeze. After a moment, the alderman frowned as the smell hit him too. 

“Yes, close,” he looked worried.

They cleared a rise and came up onto the road, visible only a few metres further up was blood. The body of a woman lay in the centre of the path, ripped open, flesh torn. Her neck had been cut to the point where she was nearly decapitated, deep lacerations through the flesh of her arms and legs. Belly and chest ripped open for her innards to be spread across the dirt.

It was the second body though, that had Will stopping in his tracks and the Alderman inhaling and going pale beside him. 

It was a man, bent backwards and impaled on the antlers of an elk head that had been severed and propped up in the centre of the road.

“That wasn’t there before - its been here, its been here,” the alderman was murmuring, frantic.

Will couldn’t take his eyes from the man’s corpse. Most of the blood was likely from the elk, spreading out across mud, mixing with the blood of the woman, but the man had bled heavily too, red slicking the elks antlers and running down its fur, staining it darker. His eyes open and staring sightlessly upside-down along the road.

His chest had been rent open, and Will could imaging the force needed to crack open the bones of the ribcage. He took a shaky step closer, his eyes kept falling back onto those dead ones, through them he felt a sense of the last moments of the man’s life. Pain, terror, shock.

“He was alive when that wound was made,” Will murmured quietly. There were imprints in the mud of the road, a line where the elk head had been dragged. Huge, familiar foot prints around it, the same as the one he had found in the clearing.

“Oh gods, oh gods,” the alderman muttered, “its been here just now. He’s here, he’s close.”

Will, turned to the alderman. 

“This is recent,” Will said “more recent than the girl.”

“That body - he wasn’t here before, it was just the girl,” the man said nervously. “Ripper’s been here, was here just now,” his pale eyes darted between Will and the body, Will and the forest.

Will nodded slowly, “I think you should head back to the village. Right now. Your Ripper isn’t far off,” Will could feel a sensation of being watched, prickling along the back of his neck.

“Right now, alderman,” Will said, drawing his sword again.

The man didn’t say anything, just turned and hurried down the road. Will was left alone with the wind and stench of blood. He approached the bodies slowly, sword still drawn and at his side. The woman was cut in a way that seemed similar to what he imagined of Anise. A multitude of desperate slices, frantic and needy. Her body had been cut up, dismembered with great effort. With the whole of this woman’s body in front of him he could see it had clearly killed by something smaller and weaker than a chort or fiend.

She was the same woman Will had seen talking to the alderman yesterday, he realised, her dark hair dancing out across the muddy road.

The other body had been killed with ease… no, kept alive with ease. Will shivered in horror, the bruising and open arteries around the hole in the man’s chest showed he had definitely been alive when his ribcage had been crushed and ripped open. When his - Will peered into the open cavity - when his heart and lungs had been taken, eaten and ripped straight from his body. He hadn’t been alive when he had been impaled onto the antlers of the elk head though, or when the head and him had been dragged out onto the road, and positioned, dead eyes of both man and beast keeping watch down the road, ready to confront anyone who came to see the woman’s dead body.

The fact that there were two separate monsters was now impossible for Will to deny. The Ripper’s message was clear - this is my territory, I am stronger, more controlled, more intelligent, my kills are _art_ , while yours are nothing. I am watching you.

The bodies in front of Will were as different as night and day, each placing the other in sharp relief. There was no mercy in the Ripper’s kill, no concern for the life that was taken, it was beneath the monster, less, unimportant. The girl’s killer had been scared, desperate, had cut her throat and killed her quickly, wounded the body after.

Blood still flowed from the man’s body, still warm. He had been killed minutes ago. Will closed his eyes and took a breath, gripping his sword more firmly. The swamp was behind him, the road running in front of him, and the old forest beyond it. The smell of blood hung thickly in the air, and he followed it and the deep tracks in the ground, heading across the damp earth and in between the trees. They grew taller, and Will followed the path between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting a little more exciting now! Also Hannibal will finally appear in the next chapter I promise.  
> I hope the fight scene was good, I haven't written that many sword fights so I hope you could follow what was happening well enough.
> 
> Yes the sorceress Will talks about is Alana of course, though she won't really appear in the story or be mentioned again. I imagine Freddy Lounds is also a sorceress too for some reason haha.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's left comments and kudos so far - you guys are the best :)


	4. A Confrontation

 

Somewhere up ahead the beast was waiting, the tracks fresh and clear in the dirt - leading Will towards it. This monster was intelligent enough to not have been seen for decades, centuries perhaps, and Will wasn’t so stupid as to think the creature didn’t know he was following it. Didn’t _want_ him to follow it.

The trunks of the trees around him now were ancient, thick and twisted, bark blackened with age and leaves blocking out the sky. This part of the old forest was older still.

Eventually he broke through into another clearing, similar to that which the first three bodies had been found in, but somehow _older_. There were more of the same upright stones here, but these were broken and cracked. If there had ever been carvings on them they had been long ago worn away by time and the elements. Thick moss blanketed the ground around them, dark-leafed creeping vines clustering at their bases. Will walked cautiously to the centre of the clearing, something - a bone, he knew - crunched under his boot in the lush grass. He didn’t look down, but kept his gaze fixed on the tree line, beyond the point of his sword where something massive sat in the shadows.

“I can see you,” he murmured, eyes trained on the darkness that was just a little blacker than the shadows around it.

The fiend stepped forwards, into the spires of pale sunlight that speared down between the leaves high above their heads. It was massive. Huge. As big as the alderman’s hut, possibly bigger. Thick muscles covered its body beneath the smooth black skin and higher across its broad shoulders and back, featherlike fur covered the beast, blurring its outline. Deep red lines patterned the area across its forearms and up over its neck, matching with the wine-dark red of its three goat-like eyes.

Its rack of antlers lifted up into the sky like a thicket of trees, as black as its skin. They stunk of blood, and Will could see it glistening along the shadowy tines. Claws as long as Will's forearm dug into the dirt on four powerful feet, each one big enough to crush a man's ribcage. He could see how those grievous wounds had been made on the victims, crushing antlers and the bone-breaking force behind those forelegs.

Will lifted his sword higher and calmed his heart. Control, strength, power. Intelligence. He let his thoughts rise to meet the emotions of the monster in front of him, and took a purposeful step to his left. Silver sword held in a firm grip, Will and the beast circled each other, each step slow and careful. There was a whispering against the edge of Will’s mind, half words, half the susurration of the breeze through his hair.

Will spun into an attack, blade flashing through the air. It met the antler of the fiend, hard enough to rattle Will’s bones, and Will pulled back as the beast twisted its great neck. It shook its antlers in a move that would have torn Will’s sword from his hand if he hadn’t dislodged it quickly enough. 

Will danced back out of range of the monster, and they circled each other again.

It rushed Will, head down and antlers poised to gore, Will managed to sidestep with a downward slash towards the fiends face, but wasn’t prepared for the the muscled foreleg which swiped down with enough force to shake the earth beneath Will’s feet as he just barely rolled out of the way. He shook his head to clear it, and stepped back.

Control, intelligence, power. Will focused on the fiend’s motivations, its emotions, pushed himself closer in empathy. There was a curiosity in the way the monster attacked, holding back just slightly. Will’s stomach sunk. The monster felt like it was playing with him, testing him. He tried to shake off the thought. Focus, focus on the now.

The fiend’s muscles bunched, and Will saw the motion a second before it was enacted, still no time to dodge but he twisted his sword around and loosened his muscles just as the arm hit him. He let his body be bowled over, rolling unsteadily to his feet from a blow that would have broken the bones of a normal human. He was rewarded with blood on his sword, where it had angled between him and the fiend’s arm. He grinned, something just this side of mad, and spat his own blood out onto the grass, feeling where he’d cut the inside of his mouth on his teeth.

The fiend roared, so loud that Will felt the urge to drop his sword to cover his ears, he didn’t though, and rolled out of the way just as the antlers swiped through the air where he had been. He barely had time to recover as the monster twisted with unexpected agility to bring its arm down, slamming it into the ground a second after Will managed to leap out of the way.

With a grunt Will slashed at the muscled black arm, scoring a thin line across the flesh before the arm lifted and swiped at him again. Will ducked, stepping backwards out of the way. 

There was a pause, and the fiend took a step to the left. Will moved right, and they circled again. For a moment he heard whispering on the edge of hearing before Will attacked once more. Stepping into the other’s range and whipping his sword around, allowing his body to roll with the momentum when the beast dodged the blow, rolling up to the side of the creature. A blast of magical fire scalded the side the fiend and then Will was dodging away again, not even needing to see the thrust of antlers to know they were coming. They came twice though, and Will wasn’t quick enough to dodge the second thrust. Hard bone caught him in the side, lifting him into the air, he hit a tree, then the ground, knocking the air from his lungs. Looking up he was just in time to see those same huge, heavy antlers rushing down towards him. He managed to cast a _quen_ sign just as they stuck, the magical shield protecting him from the worse of the blow that would have killed him, and then exploding in the fiend’s face. He rolled away as it pulled back, scrambling to find his sword and standing with a hand pressed to his ribs, breathing hard. Bruised, but perhaps not broken. His shoulder throbbed where it had hit the tree. 

The fiend turned to face Will, its three eyes glowed red, and darkness closed in around Will vision, as though night had fallen fast and heavy, leaving only the centre of Will’s gaze useful. Will backed away, keeping the fiend in that field of vision. The beast could not hypnotise him, but the pressure of its efforts caused near blindness for as long as it tried. The whispering grew louder, rushing around Will’s head like a wind until it formed words.  
Little witcher. Do you see? I know you do.

Will coughed, his chest ached.

The others never see. But you saw.

“Shut up,” Will grunted, attacking the shape of the beast, it sidestepped into the darkness on the edge of Will’s vision, and Will frantically dodged away from the blow that he knew would come. It slashed past his head, far too close for comfort, and Will backed up further.

“You are not the first witcher to hunt me.” 

The words in Will’s head were becoming clearer. Speaking in a voice that was deep and ancient as the earth itself.

“Though none have interested me like you do,” The voice said. Will slashed out at the swipe of an arm even as he dodged it. His blade barely glancing across the thick skin.

“I saw what you did.” Will said, panting, “I know what you want.”

“And what is that little witcher?” Will could taste the amusement in the voice, “What do I want?”.

“You _want_ to be seen. All these people, all these deaths, and all they saw was a body torn apart. They didn’t see you’re _art_.” Will spat.

“Indeed,” said the voice, sounding pleased at Will’s words, “they were more in death than they could ever be in life.”

Wills vision began to return, light and colour seeping back in around the edges. He felt relief, but didn’t let himself relax, body still tense and ready.

“They were people,” said Will pointlessly, “They didn’t have to be more. You could have left them be.” They circled each other again, Will panting. At the next charge of the fiend he lifted his hand into the _aard_ sign, the blast of air forcing beast to halt for a moment. Will’s knees felt weak, the magic taking more energy from him that he did not really have.

“How come I can hear you?” he asked the creature, sword held up in a block and stepping back. This was not something he had read about. The fiend lunged forward and swiped at Will, he dodged back, but his back hit a tree and the next blow caught him in the side again, there was a loud crack, his rib was definitely broken this time. Ignoring the pain, he rolled with the blow and swung his sword, managing to slice at the retreating arm. He backed away again.

“You may be immune to my hypnosis, but I still touched your mind, once that connection is made it is easy enough to form words in your language, and place them in your head.” The monster prowled after him, a huge dark shape between the trees.

“You speak. Do you have a name? Or is it just Ripper?” Will gasped, he wondered if he could distract the beast. Should he run? Or fight? He had a feeling the outcome would be the same either way.

“I have many names. Ripper has just been the most recent. You may call me… Hannibal. Yes, Hannibal.” There was a pleased grin behind the words, and Will somehow regretted asking the question. Regretted giving the creature that kind of recognition.

“You didn’t have to kill them,” he said, knowing it was stupid to try and reason even as he did it, “you didn’t need to eat them, they weren’t bothering you.”

“I am a monster. I kill because I can, I do not need a reason,” there was a pause, and then “I had a message to send. What was happening was not going to go un-confronted.”

“The other monster,” Will said, slipping around the trees, keeping them between him and the bulk of the fiend.

“The other monster,” Hannibal repeated, clearly amused, “Yes indeed, little witcher. It killed, and had the gall to blame me for it, as though I would be responsible for something so inelegant and ugly.”

Something clicked in Will’s head at the words, “Blamed you… it was a man. A human.” Suddenly the cuts made sense, the evidence slipping into place. It hadn’t been teeth or claws, it was a knife. Will caught a flash of a man, holding down a woman and slashing desperately at her throat, watching in the blood flow through his fingers as she died, then cutting her into pieces that could be mistaken as those left behind by the Ripper. 

“The alderman,” he whispered, as desperate blue eyes rose up in his mind, a frantic voice - _he was here, he was here_ , shocked by the second body on the road, _The Ripper was here_. Shocked that the ripper _had been there at all._

“There you go, little witcher. You see clearly now.”

“But why?”

“Who cares for the motives of that little human life. He will die, like the others I have killed. His body shall become a display even the lowliest fool shall understand.”

“And what of my body? When you kill me?” Will asked, his side ached with every breath - the rib definitely broken, his legs were weak, his arms tired. Blood ran down his arm from his shoulder, slicking his grip against the hilt of his sword. It must have gotten cut when he’d been thrown at the tree.

“You? I don’t intend to kill you little witcher," Hannibal's tone was amused, "Your mind is the most fascinating thing I have known in centuries. You see me… you see everyone. You can understand monsters as though you were one yourself. Why is that, little witcher?” The voice was dark and deep, reverberating in the space between Will’s ears.

Will ignored the question, “I can't just leave, can’t let you live. You’ll kill again, more than just the alderman. Innocent people.”

“Everyone kills. The wolf when it is hungry, the deer when it is threatened. Even your little humans. Yet you fight me.”

“You’re a monster,” If I got just get a good shot at the eye, Will thought, I might survive this. Might. “You kill for fun.”

“And your alderman? What does he kill for, something better? Does he cut girl’s throats because he is hungry? I am not the only monster you could be fighting.” The fiend came closer, and Will struck; two steps forward, ducking under the swiping fore-leg and thrusting his sword upwards. It cut through the side of the monster’s face, but the huge head was moving away and then back down. The thicket of antlers struck Will, knocking the air from his lungs and pinning him to the ground.

The world spun around him, and blood pumped in his ears. If just a little more pressure was placed on those bony points Will’s bones would crack, his flesh would tear, and he would die.

Then the pressure was gone, and the fiend was disappearing between the trees. 

“You have a unique mind, Will Graham, I would like to be… friends,” the words floated back into his mind, then the forest was empty again.

Will lifted his head, then let it fall back onto the dirt. Above him the afternoon light trickled into the clearing, dim and green between the trees.

Friends with a monster, he would have laughed if it his ribs would let him. 

It hadn’t killed him though, so there was a chance Will could return to finish the job. He was more prepared now, his time with the fiend - with Hannibal - in his head had let Will into the monster’s head as well. Power and control, intelligence and strength, an ancient cunning and pride, egotism that wasn’t unfounded. The beast fought like it couldn’t even imagine the possibility of losing. It had played with Will, could have killed Will at any point. Though Will knew he had surprised it as well, managed to place wounds on it, even if they had been shallow. Though if they fought again, Will knew one of them would die. Chances were still good it would be Will.

He sat up, attempting to brush dirt out of his hair with a wince. Hannibal had been right about something though; there was another monster Will needed to find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally Hannibal appears.  
> Also the second monster is revealed! I hope it came as a little bit of a surprise for people and it wasn't too obvious haha :)
> 
> Theres also only two chapters left! Next chapter is kinda short so I think I'll update tomorrow or the day after. 
> 
> (Btw Google "Witcher fiend" if you want to see what it looks like.)


	5. The Second Monster

It was dark by the time Will made it back to the village, limping with one hand pressed tight against his ribs. He could feel blood dripping down from the wound on his arm, and ignored it for now.

The young woman who had woken him in the morning answered the alderman’s door when he banged against it, she looked him up and down with wide eyes then called back into the darkness of the hovel.

“Father, the witcher’s back, he looks hurt!”

The alderman appeared in the doorway, “Get some bandages boiling girl. Come in, witcher.”

Will held up a hand, “No, I’ll be fine.” He’d rather do his own bandaging - or rather he’d drink a potion that would speed up his healing to the point where bandaging wouldn’t be necessary. He glanced back into the hut were the young woman stood awkwardly by the fire, unsure whether to follow the alderman’s instructions or not. “Can we… talk outside?” he asked.

“Of course,” the alderman stepped out of the doorway, closing the door behind him.

“Did you find the beast? Have you killed it?” he asked, eyeing the blood on Will's armour as he lead the way down the path and away from the hut.

“No, it… escaped.” That seemed easier than explaining the monster had let him live because it was _interested_ in his mind.

“I see, but you found it. It was this beast you thought it was?”

“A fiend, yes. I think I’ve worked out what the other monster is too.”

“Oh? Oh yes, this other creature you think we have,” the alderman said as they turned a corner.

Will felt tired. His ribs hurt, his arm hurt. His head hurt.

“Its a human. Someone in this village.”

“I see,” the alderman glanced around, “do you know who it is?”

“Yes.” Will made eye contact with the other in the darkness. Watched as the older man’s expression changed from careful curiosity to a kind of resigned stare.

“I see. I had hoped you wouldn’t work it out, witcher.”

“You killed those girls, dragged them out into the forest and blamed it on the monster,” Will lifted a weak gesture towards the woods, his shoulder protesting the movement. They had stopped along the outskirts of the town, and the forest was a dark outline against the sky.

“And why shouldn’t I?” the alderman said suddenly, a feverish lilt behind his tongue. “Why shouldn’t that beast be blamed? It kills enough as it is, what’s a few more? See how many it killed this month alone. Why not five instead of three.”

“It only killed that many because of you! You blamed your _murders_ on it and it was angry. Those were all threats, against you!” Will could feel the desperate frenetic energy that had been carefully hidden behind the other's mask break into him.

The alderman paled slightly, but continued on, “I had to kill them. Had to. Every day they looked at me, stared at me with their blue eyes. Had to kill them so I wouldn’t-“ he cut himself off, his expression smoothing back down into a thin and cracked veneer of calmness. “It doesn’t matter now. What will you do, witcher?”

“I can’t let you go free, you’ll kill again,” Will could see it, this man wouldn’t stop, because he wouldn’t find whatever he was looking for in the bodies.

“So you’ll cut me down? Kill me where I stand?” The alderman lifted his hands, “I am unarmed.”

“No, there needs to be a… a trial.” Will knew how to deal with monsters, but with people there had to be a process didn’t there? A trial and a judgement. That was how justice worked in society.  
Not the simple, swift justice of a sword in a beasts heart, but the complicated justice of the headman’s axe.

The alderman sighed, then gazed over Will’s left shoulder, “I am… sorry it had to be like this. I had hoped the drowners would deal with you, once you said you thought there were two monsters, but unfortunately…” he shook his head, “It matters not, I cannot let my daughter know.” The alderman nodded, gaze still fixed over Will’s shoulder.

Will felt movement behind his back, and turned just in time for a hand to grab his shoulder, pulling him closer. He looked up into the sneering face of Nyev, saw the flash of steel, felt the pain bloom hot and ragged through his belly. 

Nyev pulled the knife out of Will’s abdomen, from between the fittings in the leather armour that created a slight gap. Will fell to his knees, hands pressing reflexively against the wound in his belly. Blood welling up and pouring out between his fingers.

“I am sorry witcher, you should have stuck to killing monsters,” the alderman said above him, and there _was_ sadness there, the alderman hadn’t wanted Will to die, not like this at least. “Nyev, kill him and take his body into the forest, make it look like the Ripper’s doing.”

“Of course,” Nyev grinned as the alderman turned and left, disappearing back between the buildings.

“Why?” Will managed to ask, staring up into the younger man’s face, he could feel warm blood running down his legs, “He killed those girls, why are you helping him?”

“Sometimes some have to die for the greater good. Their deaths protected the village from evil, should’ve protected it from the likes of you too,” there was a righteous gleam in Nyev’s eyes, tempered by simple greedy sadism.

“Is that what he told you?” Will grunted, hands pressed tight to his belly and on his knees, looking up into a face of hatred. Nyev’s hand grabbed his hair and the blood-wet knife was pressed against his neck.

“I’m going to enjoy killing you, filth.” There was a twisted glee in the man’s eyes. Will couldn’t reach for his swords, but he had other options. His fingers made a motion in the air, and a weak _aard_   spell pushed the other back just as he began to swipe the knife along Will’s neck.

The thin cut stung as Will fell to his hands and knees, before pushing himself up, his broken rib throbbed with a pain that was nearly completely blocked out by the tearing agony of his stomach. He kept a hand pressed tightly to the stab wound as he stumbled to his feet. What could he do? He couldn’t fight like this, he could barely run, but that seemed his only choice.

He staggered out, away from the village. Behind him he could hear Nyev recovering and coming after him. Will broke into a limping run. 

Bushes and shrubs whipped past his legs and then the darkness of the forest was closing in overhead. Someone swore behind him, and Will staggered onwards. Here Will had his only advantage, he was bleeding out, weak and dying, but his eyes could see much better in the dark than an ordinary human.

His hand left bloody streaks on the bark of trees as he passed, and he could feel wetness dripping down his stomach. Soaking through his pants. 

“Why run, witcher? You’re just delaying the inevitable!” Nyev shouted behind him. Too close, Will stumbled faster. In the back of his mind he realised he was heading towards Hannibal, a hook in his mind pulling him onwards to the part of the forest where they had fought. He stumbled, fell and forced himself back to his feet. His strength was waning, his legs weakening. Each step was a pull at his stomach wound and a stab in his ribs.

Will collapsed, rolling over onto his back in the grass, the smell of dirt and his own blood in his nose.

There was noise to his left, and Will turned to watch as Nyev approached, panting. He had a deep scratch across his arm, looking like he had hurt himself in the dark. Shame it had only been a scratch.

“Found you, witcher,” the young man grinned, squatting down by Will. Will’s eyes dropped reflexively to the knife in the other’s hand. Moonlight filtered down through the clouds, painting Will’s blood black on the blade.

“I was just going to kill you, like the alderman said. But now you ran, and we’re out here with no one to interrupt us.” Nyev turned the knife over in his hands, “We don’t like your sort in Drudge. You know, you _should_ have left when I told you to, but you know what? I’m kind of glad you didn’t.” He tested the edge of the knife on his thumb.

Will didn’t say anything. There was an unsettling light in Nyev’s eyes, a lust for inflicting pain. Will wondered if he had killed people too. No, Will would be the first, Nyev was not experienced in this… yet.

“I’m going to have fun, taking you apart. Show you piece by piece that you’re no better than us, you nonhumans are _dirt_. _Less than dirt.”_

I’ll be dead before you even start, Will thought, a sick humour taking hold of his thoughts. Even now his vision was starting to fade, he could feel his skin cooling. His blood growing cold and slow.

Nyev reached down, prodding with the knife under the edge of Will’s tunic, digging it in against his collar bone where the point broke the skin.  
Then he stopped, his eyes seemed to have glazed over, and Will suddenly sensed a presence in the darkness behind the other’s shoulder. The knife dropped from Nyev’s suddenly limp hand, bouncing off Will’s shoulder and landing in the grass by his side. He rose from his crouch, the motion awkward and stilted, standing above Will, who looked up through blurring darkness. 

Life came back to Nyev’s eyes just as there was a loud crack, and Will watched those eyes fill with pain and terror a second before pitch dark antlers came sliding out through the front of the other’s chest. Nyev’s mouth opened and blood poured from it, sliding down his front and landing on Will. Splattering across him in a waterfall of crimson.

For a moment time hung suspended in the air like a guillotine. Nyev punctured and impaled on slick, shadowy tines above Will. His blood a dark river falling thick through the air, falling onto Will and mixing with the witcher’s own blood that soaked the ground beneath him.

Time flowed back with all the speed and inexorability of a glacier. Nyev’s eyes went dull, life leaving his body. The antlers shook, throwing the body to the side, then three glowing red eyes were hovering over Will, a huge shadowy figure blocking out the sky.

“Little witcher. So soon we meet again,” said Hannibal. More words washed over Will, but they faded away along with everything else. A different kind of darkness closed in over him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, shorter chapter but updated early.  
> Next chapter is the last chapter and it should be nearly twice as long as this one...
> 
> I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter - its actually my favourite I think. And I hope everyone enjoys the final chap, I expect to upload it in a few days.
> 
> Also I hope Nyev's fate was satisfying haha :D


	6. Endings and Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please read the end notes

 

 _Will dreamed. Nyev’s sneering face, blood in his grin as he said, “There you are witcher. See what we do to your kind.” The shine of a knife. Blue eyes in the darkness, the shadowy face of the alderman looking down on him. Blood coating his hands and an expression of fevered desperation tinged with sadness._ _“I have to do it. It’s them or her.” A flash of a woman’s blue eyes and dark hair, a pale face in the darkness._

_Will dreamed. He was being carried in long arms the colour of midnight. Above him was a man’s face, carved in ebony. Huge antlers like a crown above his head, eyes as red as wine._

_Will dreamed. He was being carried in an enormous muscled arm, warm beneath his cold cheek. Above him the stars shone and flickered._  

_Will dreamed. A voice in his head, saying his name._

_Will dreamed._

 

_*_

 

Will was warm, and it also seemed he wasn’t dead. His breath came in slow, measured draws as he cracked open an eye, and stared unseeing for a moment at the roof of a cave. Then he sat up, and regretted the decision immediately as his stomach screamed in pain. 

Will groaned, hand reaching down to touch the open stab wound. Blood was slick and heavy across his stomach, soaking his tunic and drying on his armour. A memory arose, it wasn’t _all_ his blood.

There was movement behind him, and Will looked over to see the massive shape of the fiend, lying steadily at Will’s back. His antlers black against the dawn sky visible through the mouth of the cave.

“Oh, its you,” he croaked, hand slick with blood both his and not.

Hannibal made a rumbling noise, deep in his enormous chest, his head, almost as big as Will’s body was long, turned to Will, tilted slightly in a motion of… concern?

“You’re worried about me? You care?” Will asked, eyebrows shooting up.

“Is that so surprising?” said Hannibal’s voice in his head, “I saved your life, did I not?”

The memory of antlers piercing flesh, a warm thick arm carrying him. “I amuse you yes. You wouldn’t want me to die until you were ready,” Will said, wincing and pressing his hand to his belly again.

There was a sound like a sigh in his head, then “Your mind is unique. I felt it even before you entered that festering town of mud and dreariness. When you slept I tried to draw you out into the forest to see you for myself, but you resisted my hypnosis. A witcher, I thought, but I had met witchers before, and none were like you.”

Will grunted, shoulder lifting in a stiff shrug.

“When we fought, I knew. No one has come that close to being able to survive a fight with me in a long, _long_ time. Your mind is a bright flame in a world of dirt, and the world would be less if I let it be snuffed out.”

Will lay back, unthinking against the warm wall of flesh that was Hannibal’s ribcage. “So you decided to save my life?” He thought for a moment, “I should still have died - I’m not healed,” he gestured that the gaping wound of his belly, “So what is it? Magic?”

“Something like that,” Hannibal answered, “Most of my brethren are dull, they have forgotten the old ways. It was a life for a life, in a way.”

Will remembered Nyev, impaled and losing blood that poured over Will and his wounds.

“Blood magic.”

“If you wish to call it so. There are other things I can do which are not tied to blood. Even so I cannot heal you. I have halted your death, but your body will need time to heal on its own.”

“There’s no time for that, he’s going to-“ Will gasped suddenly, memory and realisation striking him like a brick between the eyes. “I have to get back to the village. He’s going to kill her, his own daughter.” That was why the alderman killed, something like a twisted love drove him to murder his own child, and so he had killed the other women - women with dark hair and blue eyes - to try to protect her from himself. 

It wasn’t going to work.

“If you go, you will die. Let him kill her, what does it matter?” Hannibal’s eyes were dark.

“It matters.” Will said, then looked wildly around the cave, “I need herbs - celandine flowers, to make a potion - _Swallow_. It will heal me - if I am quick I can still stop him.”

Will tried to stand, but his body protested strongly and he swayed on his feet, pain radiating from his stomach, the edges of the wound pulling sickeningly with the movement. Hannibal shifted around until his huge head was in front of Will’s face, all three eyes staring into him. Will placed a hand just above the fiend’s nose, and locked eyes with him.Trying to project his emotions into the other. He _would_ go, one way or another.

“I see. I cannot dissuade you from this?”

“No.”

“Very well, I will find this ingredient for you.”

“Thank you,” Will slumped back down, the meagre strength in his legs giving out. He watched as the beast left the cave, moving silently and quickly despite his size, and then Hannibal was gone, disappearing between the trees.

So the monster he had tried to kill had saved his life. Killed Nyev in doing so, but Will couldn’t quite find it in himself to care about that, considering. It seemed Hannibal didn’t want him to die, found him… interesting, unique. Will wondered how long it would take the monster to grow bored of him, whether it would kill him when it did. 

What it would do with his body.

He wondered if he could kill Hannibal. Perhaps not, he had nearly died in his last attempt. Would have easily, if Hannibal didn’t want him alive.

The alderman wanted Will dead, Nyev had wanted Will dead. If he was being honest with himself, Will knew that most of the people he encountered would be happier to know he wasn’t breathing. No one likes a witcher right up until the point when a monster is gnawing on their bones, and sometimes not even then. That had been one of old Jack’s favourite sayings, he wondered briefly what his mentor was doing now. Exactly how disgusted the old witcher would be at Will just _conversing_ with a monster like Hannibal. It didn’t matter.

No one liked a witcher, so why didn’t he just leave them all to it, like Hannibal wanted? Let the man kill his own daughter. Let the humans fight their wars and destroy each other.

There was a delightful simplicity to Hannibal’s life. He killed because he could - though Will noticed he did not kill all that often, and he did what gave him pleasure. Hannibal wasn’t good or evil. He was darkness, and death, and bloody antlers bracketing the sky, but he wasn’t evil in the same way a blizzard that killed twenty people wasn’t evil. He just was.

So if Will gave in to Hannibal, gave him what he wanted? What? Stayed with him in the forest? Entertained him with his _unique_ mind?

What did it matter what the villagers of Drudge did or did not do? But it did. It mattered to Will. It mattered if the pale young woman who’d talked to him that morning had her throat cut. It mattered if she had to know that her father was the one doing it. It mattered if the small, stupid people of the village, with their narrow minds and instant hatred of him had to live in a town where murder went on under their noses and they blamed the monster in the forest.

It mattered if Will sat here and did nothing instead of stopping it.

He sighed, and rubbed a hand across his face, knowing he was smearing blood as he did it. With a pained grunt he settled himself back against the stone to wait.

After a while Hannibal returned, not so much with carefully picked herbs and flowers as with clods of dirt containing tiny plants and an entire bush. It would do.

Will made the best with what he had, crushing the yellow celandine with a rock and pulling the tiny flask of dwarven spirit from his pocket. The splash of it glistened over the petals and leaves, and Will pulled out his small pouch of ingredients. A monster tooth, a bit of bone, some dried purple flowers, ah there it was - still fresh. The yellowish lump of Drowner brain he’d taken yesterday, his nose wrinkled at the smell as he ground it all together again until it was mixed. He scooped the resulting paste into his mouth with his fingers, and chewed the mixture while Hannibal watched on with unconcealed curiosity. It wasn’t done properly, he should really have ground it all finer and used more spirit, given it time to settle. But the basics were there, it would heal him. He lay back on the ground, tasting the bitterness between his teeth as he waited.

After a while, he could feel the effects, a burning sensation through his veins, gathering in around his belly, his ribs, and his shoulder. His thoughts blurred together for a minute as the toxins entered his brain. This was why _Swallow_ was a potion for witchers only, it was strong, and worked well, but had a high chance to destroy the mind of a weaker body, one not already altered by mutagens.

Several long minutes later the burn faded, and Will lifted his wet tunic to look at his stomach, a fresh, pink scar where the wound had been.

After a moment to catch his breath, Will left the cave, watched by Hannibal’s red eyes.

The village wasn’t too far, and Will hurried through the forest. After a while there was a smell in the air, smoke? Will broke into a jog.

When he reached it, the town was on fire, or part of it was. Thatch roofs burned easily, and the whole place was made of wood. The fire already seemed to be spreading. People rushed between the buildings, buckets of water being handed off and thrown onto the walls and roofs. He didn’t think it was doing that much to put out the blaze.

He caught the arm of a woman as she rushed past him.

“What happened? Where’s the alderman?”

She caught sight of his blood soaked tunic and let out a tiny scream.

“The alderman?” he asked again, shaking her slightly.

She tore her gaze back up to his eyes, and gave another squeak before answering, “I don’t know, The tavern's caught fire! The alderman was up by his hut, last I saw.”

Will nodded his thanks, and dropped her arm, she scurried away quickly.

He spared a glance towards the blazing tavern, how this sodden place burned he didn’t know, with the liberal application of oil most likely. Someone had set fire to the tavern. He had no time to work it out, instead he turned and ran, heading towards the alderman’s hut. There was no one outside but the door was open. He entered and then stopped short.

The alderman was gripping his daughter from behind, knife pressed against her throat as she whimpered.

“It ok, its ok,” he was saying, whispering into her hair, “No one will come while they’re dealing with the fire. We’ve got time, I- I can do this right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She let out a terrified whine, and then caught sight of Will in the doorway. She jerked slightly, and the alderman looked up eyes going wide when he saw Will.

“You?! You were dead! We killed you.”

Will drew his sword, the steel one. “You need to let her go,” he said, trying to project calm into his voice.

“No, no, no, no,” the alderman shook his head, he pulled the knife harder against the girls throat, her head forced back as she tried to avoid the blade. “This has to happen, its the only way! I have to honour her!”

“No!-“

The man had already started to cut, Will wouldn’t reach them in time. He threw his hand up and sketched a shaky _axii_ into the air, and the alderman’s eyes glazed over slightly, his grip on the knife fumbled. Will was terrible at _axii_ , the spell meant to confuse the mind of his opponents always served to fold back on him as well, and he fought through the moment of confusion himself as the daughter pushed her way out of her fathers hands, falling to her knees on the ground, both hands to her own neck as blood bubbled up between her fingers.

The alderman shook off his stupor, saw the woman on the floor, and lifted his knife, his expression twisted in desperation before bringing it down, a slash aimed at her throat to finish the job.

Will didn’t think, the confusion still fading from his own mind. Instead he stepped forward, his sword flashing through the air and embedding into the man’s shoulder. He looked up at Will, almost in confusion before twitching forwards, knife still aimed at his daughter’s throat. Will pulled the sword free and stabbed again. The blade slid easily between ribs, and they stood for a second, pale blue eyes wide and Will’s hands pressed against the alderman's chest where his sword was embedded to the hilt. Then the alderman fell, sliding from the wet steel and onto the ground. Blood spread beneath his body over the timber floor, thick and red.

The girl still knelt on the ground, eyes wide.

There was the sound of feet outside the hut. “He said he was looking for the alderman,” said a woman’s voice from the other side of the door. Will looked down, his sword covered in blood, the alderman dead on the ground, his daughter’s neck sliced open and bleeding in thick lines between her pale fingers.

She looked up at him, “Run.”

He hesitated. Tiny tears formed in her sad eyes.

“They think you started the fire too. Run,” she gasped.

Will ran.

 

*

 

The forest was dark, when the sound of chase finally disappeared for good. The people of Drudge had been angry and scared. Pitchforks and torches.

He sat down on a fallen log, the dampness of the moss leaching into his pants. Above him the darkness and shadows coalesced into the shape of Hannibal.

“Little witcher.”

“Hannibal,” Will looked up into red eyes.

“You saved the daughter.”

“Yes.”

“You took a kill that was by rights mine,” there was a hint of annoyance in Hannibal’s voice as he loomed over Will.

“Yes.”

“You owe me a life in exchange.”

“Will you kill me?” Will asked, he didn’t draw his sword.

“No, not your life.”

“I won't let you kill the villagers, I am still a witcher, a monster who deserves to die, needs to die.”

The fiend turned and paced left then right, “So you would lay down your life for these villagers, these boring, dreadful idiots. The same that would see you killed?” There was annoyance in the voice now.

“Yes,” Will said simply.

“And what of those like the boy who stabbed you, or the alderman. Would you lay down your life for them? For more drunks and gamblers, and men who beat their wives. Women who put their child’s hand in the fire, little people who like to watch small things die? You would die for them?”

“No,” Will said, “Not for them.”

The beast in front of Will smiled.

 

 

***** EPILOGUE *****

 

 

Styen _enjoyed_ spreading the light of the holy fire to the denizens of Novigrad, or through them, as the case might be. He was a witch hunter, and he had just found a witch.

“Bring her out onto the street,” he said to his partner, Hammon - a skinny witch hunter who was his regular companion on nights like these, “Let all see what happens to a sorceress under the light of the divine fire.”

They dragged her out of her door, and she screamed as Hammon held her down. Styen found what he was looking for outside her house, a brazier that lit the cobbles of the dark street, still flickering with fire. He picked up a red-hot coal, and held it smoking and crackling between the fingers of his thick leather gloves.

“Hold her still, let her see the fire. _Let it sit in her eyes._ ”

Hammon grinned, his teeth shining orange in the light of the brazier. Styen _liked_ his job. He liked the sound that fingers made when you broke them, he liked the smell of searing flesh from the pyres as the witches burned, and he liked the expression people made, right at the point where they realised their pleas and offers of bribery wouldn’t work.

This sorceress had stopped pleading, but no matter, they would make her scream soon enough. He lifted the burning coal.

“Gentlemen,” there was a voice from the darkness, at the edge of the firelight. Styen felt his muscles tense, it was a pleasant voice, but it had an edge to it that spoke to his hindbrain of teeth. The calm grin of a crocodile.

“You dare interrupt the work of the holy fire?” Styen lowered the coal and glared into the darkness. The owner of the voice stepped forwards.

It was a tall man - though there was something not-quite-elvish in the set of his cheekbones - with pale hair and dark eyes. The man smiled, and there was definitely something off about him, Styen thought. He was tall, but he wasn’t huge, yet somehow Styen kept getting the sense that the stranger was somehow much bigger than he appeared.

“You’re not a witch-lover are you?” Styen asked suspiciously, dropping the coals and moving his hand to grip the hilt of his sword. It happened occasionally, someone trying to stop the fire’s passage through the blackened streets of the city.

The stranger merely smiled, there was a hint of tooth.

“Let her go.”

That hadn’t been the stranger, and Styen whipped around to see another man. His gaze settled on the two swords strapped to his back, then the stretched out pupils. A witcher.

“Fucking mutant,” he spat, it seemed non-humans grew like weeds in Lower Novigrad. Disgusting. Witchers, like all magic-users, were an affront to the eternal fire. Styen gripped his weapon tighter, he’d show this one exactly where he could stick those swords.

“That was… rude,” said the other man, the one with the cheekbones. His eyes almost seemed to glow, and Styen felt a light prickle in the back of his mind.

The witcher drew his sword, it was long, and glinted in the firelight, “I would _really_ suggest you let her go,” he said.

Hammon did let the woman go, but drew his sword, “She’ll get whats coming to her, but looks like we’ll deal with you two first,” he said, with a vicious sneer. The woman scrambled to her feet and took off down the road, slipping away into the darkness.

The witcher shrugged, seemingly unconcerned by the threat. Styen would have said something more, but his gaze was caught by movement back to his right. The other intruder’s shape was suddenly somehow billowing outwards, thick darkness and shadows climbing over each other to form something that blotted out the night sky. Above him, black antlers gleamed. It _was_ huge, Styen thought, numbly. He’d never seen or heard of magic like this before. He opened his mouth.

“What the fuck-”

There was blood. There was darkness. There were antlers slick with death, black under the moonlight. 

And, in some small way, there was also justice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end!
> 
> Sorry this chapter was a little late, I spent quite a while going over the ending and editing it. I'm still not entirely happy with it but its at a point where I don't think I can make it better.  
> Anyway! I hope everyone enjoyed this conclusion! I know there wasn't a whole lot of Hannibal and Will interaction in this story but I hope what was there was satisfying and enjoyable. I know there are a lot of flaws in this story but there are still also quite a number of things I'm proud of, not least of which was actually managing to finish it :D
> 
> Also thank you so much to everyone who left comments and kudos, reading your comments always makes me so happy and is honestly so encouraging. Thank you as well to everyone who simply read and gave this story a chance. <3
> 
> Feel free to tell me how you felt about this last chapter, and if you have questions feel free to ask them, I try to respond to most of my comments :)
> 
> Thank you all again! :)


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